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Re: Uusisuom, Unilang, auxlang discussions in CONLANG

From:Christophe Grandsire <christophe.grandsire@...>
Date:Tuesday, April 24, 2001, 15:06
En réponse à Daniel44 <Daniel44@...>:

> Dear Oskar, > > It was of course inevitable that I should feel obliged to write a reply > to > your curious comments. > > You call Uusisuom 'another obscure conlang'. It's worth mentioning here > that > EVERY conlang, including Esperanto is obscure to the vast majority of > people > in the world. >
Well, maybe the language is obscure to many people, but the name Esperanto is known to a lot of people all around the world (not only in Western countries), or at least more known than most other conlangs, artlangs or auxlangs, including Uusisuom. Not that I want to begin a flame-war about anything, I just want to put things in perspective.
> > 'While at best a naive auxlang'. Well, I'm not sure what to make of this > comment. >
Well, as a person who cannot hear the difference between the "u" and "y" of Uusisuom (like approximately 3/5 of the world population, lowest approximation of the number of people in the world who don't differentiate those two sounds in their native langs), and seeing how much trouble it gave even to English speakers, I think that an auxlang that leads to such kinds of problems is well defined as "naive". Don't take it as an insult, but as a constructive criticism which means: "you can improve it".
> Auxiliary languages can be successful, depending on various things: > > - original and appealing design > - exhaustive promotion > - ease of use and fun to learn > - community spirit among speakers > - well run organisation > - various publications etc. >
Agreed. Indeed, that's pretty much why Esperanto is successful, or at least more successful than other auxlangs (especially due to the 4th point).
> To be honest, I am not interested in studying more linguistics. I have > found > many linguists to be tedious, back biting and pretentious and I know > enough > of languages from my own study (as was the case with Zamenhof) that I > have > the confidence to create and promote my language. >
Well, the fact that "many" (be careful, this list is full of linguists who are far from tedious, back biting and pretentious) linguists behave the way you describe doesn't mean that linguistics itself is worthless. Even Zamenhof could be considered as an amateur linguist, like many of us.
> I am not interested in 'improving' Uusisuom for the same reasons that > Zamenhof largely rejected demands to 'improve' Esperanto.
This I cannot let pass. I really have to correct this untruth. I don't want to begin a flamewar, but just to correct what you said, just by stating the historical facts. Saying the Zamenhof largely rejected demands to "improve" Esperanto is not only incorrect, but rather insulting for a man who spent the next 15 years after he published his first booklet about "la lingvo internacia" asking for comments and criticisms in order to improve Esperanto for international communication. He was ready to change everything that he was said was not fit, and that includes a lot: giving up with the accusative ending, or at least make it optional, giving up with the agreement between noun and adjective, make the language more gender-neutral by adding a 3rd person genderless pronoun, make the stems genderless and create a suffix for masculine gender (yes, even in 1900 it was already a problem, and Zamenhof was ready to correct it), modifying the function of the verbal participles, changing the plural marking, etc... His only requirement was that the changes would have to be accepted by the majority of the Esperantists, since he knew that languages, even auxlangs, are merely a convention between speakers and that only if the majority of speakers agree on it, it can work. That's why during one of the first Universalaj Kongresoj (I don't remember which one), a vote happened, where Esperantists had to choose between an Esperanto close to the original of the booklet of 1887, a Reformed Esperanto with all the proposed changes, or different shades of changes in between. The voters had agreed that whichever form of Esperanto would win would be the definitive one which would be taught later (that in order to preserve the stability of the language. It had to stay this only until there would be enough speakers that the language could not be destroyed simply by personal innovations). Zamenhof had already given up his rights as creator of the language and said that he would obey the majority, as any simple Esperantist, and that he wouldn't vote nor give any opinion on what should be done. An overwhelming majority voted for an Esperanto nearly without changes and that's why the Esperanto which is spoken now is mostly like the one which was published first by Zamenhof. Even after that, Zamenhof sensed very early the signs of what would be the crisis that would lead to the break of the Esperantist community into two groups and the creation of Ido, and again proposed innovations, most of them the ones he had already proposed before the vote. Among all Esperantists, he was the most innovative one, the most eager to make Esperanto into the most suitable tool for the majority. It's far from you view that he "rejected" demands to improve Esperanto. On the contrary, he was the first to ask for them. The only reason why it never worked was because the majority didn't want those changes. That's quite different from the attitude of Schleyer (or Schreyer? cannot remember his name), the inventor of Volapük, who rejected all comments and criticisms ever on his language and used his property rights to have all reform attempts failed. This stubborn attitude is the main reason why the community that had been created around Volapük finally broke apart and abandoned the language, except for a few ones faithful to the abbot, and the main reason why Volapük failed as a universal language. Now I think you should meditate on those two stories (you can easily check them, I didn't tell any lie) before saying that you are not interested in 'improving' Uusisuom. The language
> is > interesting, appealing and sufficiently easy and fun to learn and use to > satisfy my objectives. >
"Your" objectives. you just said it. It satisfies "your" objectives. the problem is that an auxlang is not there to satisfy one person but a whole community. Zamenhof had understood that, Schleyer hadn't. Esperanto had the biggest community of speakers of all IALs, Volapük one of the smallest. Draw your conclusions yourself.
> I admit freely that Uusisuom is not a perfect language (show me one that > is), but that does not make it 'naive' and I resent such a comment. >
It depends on what you mean by "naive". How long did you work on the language before publishing it? How long did you think about it before writing anything? If you take "naive" as "in its infancy", then I don't know what's insulting about this comment.
> From what I can gather, criticisms of Uusisuom come from those who are > quick > to judge and even quicker to criticise. I have not simply picked at bits > from other languages, nor have I attempted to copy an existing auxlang. > Uusisuom is my own creation and design, and as its father I will be > happy to > watch it take its first steps and stumbles along the path towards, I > believe, significant success. >
That is exactly the attitude of Schleyer towards the ones who were asking for reforms of Volapük. Nobody knows if the reforms asked by the Volapükists were founded are not. Still, the simple fact that Schleyer simply never wanted to hear about them was enough to destroy the movement that had begun to appear around the language. Take this as a friendly advice: put your pride a little aside and don't reject all comments because your language is good enough for you. Maybe you're right and Uusisuom doesn't need any improving (I don't have an opinion about it), but the point is not there: if you want to make it a successful IAL (and from what you're claiming that's what you want), it will have to be accepted by a lot of people, not only a few friends, and to do so you'll have to make concessions, even if they are temporary. Look at the example of Zamenhof: his language was accepted with nearly no modification, but that was only because Zamenhof never rejected any comment or critics, and let the users and learners decide what they wanted. I wish you good luck with the spreading of your auxlang, and I really hope for you that you will succeed. Christophe. http://rainbow.conlang.free.fr

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John Cowan <jcowan@...>